June 30, 2017

Bonnie and Clyde Files 8

Bonnie and Clyde prowled the high grass along the bank. I sat at the TV tray inches from the river and let my mind drift with the current. I waited and waited and then a mesmerizing commenced…toward boats of all things, toy boats. I thought that perhaps I would bring a toy boat to this river and play with it as a child might play, if a middle-aged man had a great notion to play with toy boats on an Oregon Coast river with no around except two old dogs. Yes, he does, or he instantly had one now!

It occurred to me that in my youth I never had a toy boat. I was always the Army/Marine-toy-kind-of-kid, tanks and trucks, half tracks and howitzers. Is there something inherently wrong with a child who never had a single toy boat? Only toy tanks? It also occurred to me that I had only one indelible memory of any boats in my youth: eating octopus from a sherry glass in a formal dining room aboard a cruise ship bound for Brazil that was transporting my family into missionary service for the Church of Christ.

I stared at the river and the rocks below the surface and imagined constructing a harbor for my boat, or better yet, a toy ship, perhaps even a fleet of toy ships! Why stop at a fleet? Why not a flotilla? Why not include an ark, yacht, battleship, cruiser, minesweeper, trawler, drug boat, Love Boat, freighter, Huck Finn raft, Coast Guard cutter, amphibious landing craft, corsair, barque, schooner, sampan, a canoe, yes, a canoe on the Lewis and Clark River, modeled after the canoe Lewis and Clark’s men ripped off from the Chinooks before they departed Fort Clatsop.

Clyde came over and nuzzled my pocket. Treat time goddammit! The spell was broken. I packed up the studio and we headed home. As I walked, I couldn’t stop thinking about toy boats. I knew I would begin my search for one soon, perhaps that very morning. They were out there, lost, forlorn, dry docked, languishing on dusty shelves of the thrift stores. I would find the boats and return them to the water to float again. It occurred to me that I was trying to do exactly the same thing for myself.

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The Old Crow

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In December of 2020, author Matt Love moved to Portland to care for his elderly father.

Returning to the Rose City jolted Love after 23 years residing on the Oregon Coast. In the Sellwood neighborhood where he lived, Love met a homeless man named Mark. They formed a friendship over literature and the unforeseen magical discoveries in street libraries. They created The Old Crow Book Club, and yes, sometimes that involved drinking Old Crow on a sidewalk.

The club also included several other Sellwood homeless men and women cut from John Steinbeck's Cannery Row cloth.

In due course, Love learned the members' stories of homelessness and how they survived. He wondered what happened to his beloved state of Oregon and attempted to help Mark get off the streets only to run up against the seemingly futile policies to address the crisis.

Along the way, he had the best conversations about books in his life and wrote The Old Crow Book Club, where he recounts his interactions with the homeless people in his neighborhood and offers some suggestions how to alleviate what he considers the greatest man-made American humanitarian disaster of his adult life.

The Old Crow Book Club is available for purchase here and select independent bookstores in Oregon.

Choice Cuts

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Choice Cuts of Oregon Fiction by Matt Love contains 20 stories, all set in Oregon. The cast of characters includes a depressed Santa Claus, Steve Prefontaine, Jack Ramsay's fast break offense, socialist squirrels, a clearcut, a dead deer, a junior high football team, a high school tennis player, a dissipated teacher, a man who evolves into a beaver, a homeless vet, a jilted preacher, a double date to a prom, rural degenerates, a wily caterer, and much more.

The publication of the collection culminates a quarter century of the author's writing about Oregon and rambling around the state.

Choice Cuts is available for purchase here, through Amazon, or select independent bookstores in Oregon.

The Savage

of State Street

Nestucca Spit Press is proud to present The Savage of State Street: The Thieving and Literary Lives of Smoky Epley. He is the greatest unheralded writer in Oregon history and also one of its more mediocre, colorful and persistent thieves.

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In 1973, Oregon State University Press published Men in Exile: An Anthology of Creative Writing by Inmates of the Oregon State Penitentiary. Twenty-two of Smoky Epley's pieces appeared in the book.

Smoky spent most of his adult life in state and federal prisons for robbery. In 2008, during one of his brief stints of freedom, Smoky became friends with Matt Love, an Oregon author and publisher. They met after Love discovered Men in Exile and wrote a newspaper column about the landmark book. Smoky read the column and reached out.

He returned to prison in 2009 after forging a check. Upon his release in 2011, Love encouraged Smoky to write a memoir. He completed half of Auto before dying in February of 2013.